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Managing Screens While Presenting with Zoom

What this is about

We are all used to presenting using PowerPoint in a classroom, but presenting using Zoom screen sharing can be difficult because both PowerPoint and Zoom would like to take over the entire screen, making it hard to get to other notes, diagrams, etc. that you would like to use or share. Here are some tips for overcoming these issues.

Get PowerPoint Out of Full Screen Mode

By default, PowerPoint wants to fill up the whole screen with your presentation, so you cant access any other apps, which is troublesome. To avoid this:

  1. Open your presentation
  2. Click on the Slide Show tab at the top.
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  3. Click on the Set Up Slide Show button. This opens a window with various slide show settings. The default presentation mode is Presented by a speaker (full screen) this is why PowerPoint is taking over your screen. Instead, change to Browsed by and individual (window).
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    Now when you present, your presentation will be in a window. This means you can move and resize it while you are sharing it via Zoom, making it much more convenient to present, especially if you have only one monitor. When you save this document, this setting will be saved too, so it will always present that way in the future. Of course, this will also work for students, who can also benefit from this change in settings for their presentations.

Presenting with PowerPoint via Zoom if you have dual monitors

https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/203395347-Screen-sharing-a-PowerPoint- presentation

Get Zoom out of full screen mode

This problem occurs at the other end as well, where folks are viewing a presentation via Zoom. By default, when someone is screen sharing, Zoom takes over the entire screen, to maximize the resolution of whats being displayed, but it can make it hard for participants to get to any other materials on their computer. Zoom allows folks viewing a screen share to get out of Full Screen mode. Share this with your students.

While you are in a meeting

Pressing escape key gets you out of Full Screen mode.

Settings for all meetings

  1. Go to Zoom preferences menu
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  2. Go to the General tab at top and uncheck the box next do Enter full screen automatically when viewing screen shared by others.
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